Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 13

Debunking 4 Myths About InflationThe truth about inflation is...

Debunking 4 Myths About Inflation

The truth about inflation is getting covered up by countless myths spewed by corporations and their political lackeys.

Here are the facts:

Fact #1: Inflation is not being driven by wage increases.

Although wages have been rising, they’ve been rising more SLOWLY than prices. Hourly wages grew by 5 percent in the past year — but prices rose 8.6 percent. This means, when you adjust for inflation, workers actually got a 3.5 percent pay cut over the past year.

Fact #2: Corporate profits are one of the main drivers of inflation.

Corporations are raising prices above what’s needed to cover their higher costs. These mark-ups have soared. Corporations are getting away with this price gouging because they face little to no competition. And they’re using the specter of inflation as a cover.

Last year, corporations raked in their highest profits in 70 years. One recent study found that over half the increase in prices we’ve been experiencing can be attributed to fatter corporate profits.

Fact #3: Federal assistance to people during the pandemic did not overheat the economy.

Most families — who haven’t had a real wage increase in years — used the assistance to pay down debt or save for the future. The assistance was barely enough to keep working families afloat.

Fact #4: Inflation is not the result of President Biden’s or Democrats’ policies. 

Republicans want to blame them for rising prices. But Democrats have tried advancing bills to bring down prices and address corporate price gouging, yet Republicans and a handful of corporate Democrats refuse to pass them.

So don’t fall for the corporate myths about inflation.

Higher prices are not being driven by wage increases. They were not driven by federal assistance to people during the pandemic. And Democrats aren’t to blame.

Inflation is being driven in large part by record corporate profits. The best way to fight it is to remove corporate incentives to raise prices through a windfall profits tax. And reduce monopoly power through tougher antitrust enforcement.

Know the truth.

Why Food Prices Are Rising Even MoreMonopolies are slowly...

Why Food Prices Are Rising Even More

Monopolies are slowly killing rural America — and driving up the price you pay for food.

Just four firms control 85% of all beef, 66% of all pork, and 54% of all poultry. This degree of monopolization is hurting farmers — and you.

Monopolists control nearly every part of the food production process, from selling feed to farmers, to packaging the meat and poultry for supermarkets. Half of all chicken farmers report having just one or two processors to sell to.

Farmers are essentially forced to buy from and sell to monopolies at whatever price the corporation wants – often taking on crushing debt to do so. They are trapped in long-term binding contracts, with no way out but losing their livelihood altogether.

Meatpackers used to compete at cattle auctions for what ranchers produced – which helped ranchers get a reasonable return on their investment. Now, with so few buyers, ranchers have no choice but to sign contracts with meatpackers, and sell their cattle for a lower price than if the market were truly competitive.

In 1980, 62 cents of every dollar consumers spent on beef went to ranchers. Today, only 37 cents do. Most of the profits are going into the pockets of the monopolists.  

And here’s the kicker: Even though farmers are getting squeezed, the ag monopolists are also charging you higher prices. During the pandemic, beef prices rose nearly 16% — and the four biggest beef companies’ profits rose more than 300 percent.

These corporations are using their monopoly power to fix prices. Just recently, beef giant JBS settled — without admitting guilt, of course — a beef price-fixing case for $52.5 million.

Monopolization is happening across the food sector. In corn, soybeans, dairy, pesticides, and farm machinery. The result is the same: lower pay to farmers, bigger profits for the monopolists, higher prices for you.

A better way to hold these monopolies accountable would be to break them up, and stop future mergers. But it won’t be easy. They flex their political muscle through powerful lobbies like the North American Meat Institute, and maintain a revolving door with regulatory agencies like the US Department of Agriculture.

Well, I say, take them on. Rural America is hurting, farmers are getting squeezed, and consumers are being shafted. Notwithstanding the power of food monopolies, taking them on is wildly popular — especially in Rural America.

But don’t just listen to me, listen to what farmers are saying about this:

“I’m here to tell the powers at be to enforce the antitrust laws for the world of agriculture.”

“The laws are on the books. We have to strengthen those laws and do what Teddy Roosevelt did to break up the monopolies.”

“Don’t let these boys who come to Washington with pockets of money set there and bribe our congressman year after year after year.”

“Who will stand up for me if you don’t?”

For the good of us all, America needs to enforce antitrust laws, and break up Big Ag.

How Amazon, Starbucks, and Other Companies Fight UnionsYou as a...

How Amazon, Starbucks, and Other Companies Fight Unions

You as a worker have a legal right to join a union, but there are many ways big corporations are skirting the law to stop you from getting your fair share. You could be working for a union-buster and not even know it.

Here are four of the biggest union-busting tricks to look out for:

One: Anti-Union Propaganda.

Employers turn workers into a captive audience for false or misleading claims about unions. 

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In 2019 Delta distributed pamphlets to flight attendants and ramp service workers warning that union fees would cost $700 dollars per year. But here’s what they didn’t mention: unionized workers earn $700 more per month.

Weird how they left that part out, isn’t it?

Amazon wallpapered its warehouses with anti-union ads. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz claimed he had no choice but to exclude workers at unionizing stores from new employee benefits.

Apparently when you’re the boss you can just make stuff up.

Two: Your employer hires fancy anti-union firms, lawyers, and consultants.

The company claims it can’t afford to raise workers’ pay but spends millions on anti-union consultants. You might hear your bosses call this “Union Avoidance,” but it basically just means “Union busting, in a suit.”

Three: Delay, delay, delay.

It’s illegal for employers to cancel a vote on whether to unionize. But they skirt the law to keep that vote from happening as long as possible.

And while they’re delaying, they play dirty tricks to stop a union’s momentum. Before a recent labor election in Buffalo, Starbucks flooded stores with managers to pressure workers. One Starbucks employee reported he was told to go to a meeting, only to be greeted by six managers pressuring him to reject the union.

So that’s how many managers it takes to screw over an employee.

Four: If none of these union-busting tactics work, your employer might just break the law.

Starbucks recently fired more than twenty union leaders. Amazon fired a union leader for missing work – even though he was on leave to care for a COVID-stricken family member. U.S. employers are charged with violating federal law in over 40% of all union election campaigns.

I’m sorry, I just have to pause for a second here. 40% of the time? Really? If I broke the law 40% of the time, I’d be in jail quicker than you can say “Pinkerton!”

Are companies allowed to skirt the law like this? No! But labor laws take a long time to enforce – if they’re enforced at all. And the worst that can happen is a corporation has to rehire a worker who it illegally fired and provide back pay. No wonder some companies decide that breaking the law is cheaper than following it. It’s simply a “cost of doing business” for a giant corporation like Amazon.

But here’s some good news: A bill called “The PRO Act” would strengthen protections for union organizers and make many kinds of “union avoidance” illegal. Call your lawmakers and ask them to support it today.

They won’t just be on the right side of history. They’ll be on the right side of public opinion. A majority of Americans, including 77% of young people, support the right to join a union. Workers at Starbucks and Amazon have refused to be intimidated and have started to unionize. All over the country, American workers are growing wise to corporate union-busting tricks.

Big corporations are fighting dirty to keep their workers from organizing – and they’re still losing. Imagine what could happen if they had to fight fair.

4 Myths About Raising the Minimum WageThe federal minimum wage...

4 Myths About Raising the Minimum Wage

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not been raised since 2009. That’s the longest period without an increase since the minimum wage was enacted, meaning today’s minimum wage is actually worth far less than it was in 2009.

This is an insult to American workers, and bad for our economy. It’s far past time to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour. 

Today’s minimum wage is a starvation wage. A full-time minimum wage worker cannot afford a two-bedroom rental in any city, county, or state in the entire country. Meanwhile, billionaires like Jeff Bezos can afford a D.C. mansion with 25 bathrooms and 5 living rooms — just one of his many mansions.

The current minimum wage isn’t so low because these workers are “worth” less than they were years ago; quite the opposite. If the minimum wage had kept pace with workers’ productivity increases since 1968, it would be over $22 an hour today.

Even so, right wingers are out to scare you about raising the wage. Let’s debunk each of their talking points.

Myth #1: If businesses have to raise wages, they’ll cut employees’ hours or cut jobs altogether.

Rubbish. Since at least the 1930s, critics have argued that setting any minimum standard of decency at the workplace will raise employer costs and kill jobs — child labor laws, the 40-hour workweek, and workplace safety laws. Look: Treating workers decently is worth the price. 

Besides, an abundance of research shows that increases in the minimum wage do not reduce the overall number of jobs. Researchers examined 138 state-level minimum wage increases and found that the number of low-Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-Wage Jobs*wage jobs remained essentially unchanged in the five years following the increase, but paid more. That’s a job upgrade, not a job loss, and multiple studies have come to the same conclusion.

When I led the fight to raise the minimum wage in 1996, many Republicans predicted huge job losses. Well, I’m happy to report that after the increase, almost 10 million low-wage workers received a raise with no decline in overall employment. It’s simply a myth that raising the wage automatically means lost jobs.

Not to mention the benefits for workers themselves. Raising the wage to $15 an hour by 2025, as proposed in the Raise the Wage Act, would give 32 million workers a raise.†

Here’s the bottom line: If your business model depends on paying your workers starvation wages, you should not be in business. 

Myth #2: Small businesses won’t be able to afford the higher wage and will be put out of business.

Baloney. The fact is, a higher minimum wage can actually lower costs to small businesses.

How? For starters, a higher minimum wage attracts more potential workers into the labor force, thereby giving employers more choice of whom to hire. This leads to higher productivity and better service. Better service means more satisfied clients and customers. Higher paid workers are also more likely to stick around, saving businesses the hefty costs that come with recruiting, hiring, and training new workers.

A study of the San Francisco airport confirms this: researchers found that following a wage increase, a majority of workers who received a raise improved their overall performance. The higher wages even led to shorter airport lines. Researchers also found that employee turnover declined by 34 percent – saving employers an estimated $6.6 million a year.

Smart business owners understand this. Henry Ford, after introducing the “five dollar day” in 1914 when the typical industry wage was less than half that, called it his best cost-cutting strategy because of the productivity boost that followed.

Myth #3: If the wage is raised, prices for everything will skyrocket and lead to widespread inflation.

Wrong again. Researchers have found that for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, prices increase by less than half a percent. And it’s a temporary price increase — occurring only in the month the wage hike goes into effect. No way this sparks inflation. 

In fact, the minimum wage needs to be raised so that it can catch up with inflation. Because of inflation, the minimum wage is now worth almost a third less than it was in 1968. And since it was last raised in 2009, it’s lost 17 percent of its value. This means that compared to 2009, minimum wage workers have lost $3,950 every year, leaving them with less money in their pockets to spend and keep the economy going.

That’s why a higher minimum wage would boost economic growth. 70 percent of the economy depends on consumer spending, so more money in people’s pockets means they can spend more on the goods and services that keep the economy going.

Oh, and raising the minimum wage would reduce the amount of money taxpayers spend on public assistance that families need because their breadwinners don’t make enough to live on. It’s estimated that nearly half of federal minimum wage workers’ families are enrolled in at least one safety net program, costing the public $107 billion every year. That’s right: our tax dollars are subsidizing corporations that don’t pay a living wage.

Myth #4: Most minimum wage workers are teenagers making some extra money on the side; they don’t need a wage increase.

More rubbish. While this might have been the case in 1968, it certainly isn’t now. Today, only 1 in 10 workers who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage is a teenager. More than half are between the ages of 25 and 54. More than half of them work full time, and over a quarter have children. Nearly 8 million are mothers. 

Today’s starvation wage hurts people who are in their prime earning years, preventing them from building wealth and establishing financial security.

Raising the minimum wage would also help reduce racial and gender pay disparities. Minimum wage increases and expansions in the late 1960s reduced the income gap between Black and white workers. Raising the wage would have a similar effect today, because Black workers, Hispanic workers, and women comprise a large portion of today’s low-wage workers.

In sum, raising the minimum wage is good for workers, good for businesses, and good for the economy. In addition to all this, raising the minimum wage is the morally correct thing to do. It ought to lift working people out of poverty, not keep them in it.

We’re the richest country in the world, home to the richest people on the planet. We can, and we must, treat our workers with the dignity and respect they deserve. That starts with paying them a living wage.

The Secret to the GOP’s Assault on Your RightsDemocracy is not...

The Secret to the GOP’s Assault on Your Rights

Democracy is not just under attack in America. In some states, it’s being lost.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once suggested that states could serve as laboratories of democracy, but these states are more like laboratories of autocracy.

Take Wisconsin. The GOP has so successfully rigged state elections through gerrymandering that even when Democrats get more votes, Republicans win more seats. In 2018, Republicans won just 45% of the vote statewide, but were awarded 64% of the seats.

Wisconsin is one of several states where an anti-democracy movement has taken hold.

But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, Wisconsin pioneered the progressive era of American politics at the start of the twentieth century — with policies that empowered workers, protected the environment, and took on corporate monopolies. State lawmakers established the nation’s first unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and strict child labor laws.

Teddy Roosevelt called the state a “laboratory for wise … legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole.”

But for the last decade, Wisconsin has become a laboratory for legislation that does the exact opposite.

After Republicans took control in 2010, one of the first bills they passed gutted workers’ rights by dismantling public-sector unions — which then decimated labor’s ability to support pro-worker candidates.

This move aligned with the interests of their corporate donors, who benefited from weaker unions and lower wages.

This new Wisconsin formula has been replicated elsewhere.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina won a minority of votes in 2018, but still won majorities in their state assemblies thanks to gerrymandering.

In Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, Republicans have crafted gerrymanders that are strong enough to create supermajorities capable of overturning a governor’s veto.

Even more alarming, hundreds of these Republican state legislators, “used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” on behalf of Donald Trump.

How did this happen? Put simply: years of careful planning by corporate interest groups and their radical allies.

And the corporations enabling these takeovers aren’t just influencing the law — their lobbyists are literally writing many of the bills that get passed.

This political alliance with corporate power has given these Republican legislatures free rein to pursue an extreme culture-war agenda — one that strips away rights that majorities of people support — while deflecting attention from their corporate patrons’ economic agendas.

Republicans are introducing bills that restrict or criminalize abortion. They’re banning teachers from discussing the history of racism in this country. They are making it harder to protest and easier to harm protestors. They are punishing trans people for receiving gender-affirming care and their doctors for providing it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are still laboratories of democracy where true public servants are finding creative ways to defend the rights of us all.

Elected officials in Colorado and Vermont are codifying the right to abortion. California lawmakers have proposed making the state a refuge for transgender youth and their families. And workers across the country are reclaiming their right to organize, which is helping to rebuild an important counterweight to corporate power.

But winning will ultimately require a fifty state strategy — with a Democratic Senate willing to reform or end the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, protect voting rights, and protect the right to organize nationwide.

America needs a national pro-democracy movement to stop the anti-democracy movement now underway — a pro-democracy movement committed to helping candidates everywhere, including in state-level races.

This is where you come in. Volunteer for pro-democracy candidates — and if you don’t have time, contribute to their campaigns.

This is not a battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy.

4 Myths About Raising the Minimum WageThe federal minimum wage...

4 Myths About Raising the Minimum Wage

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not been raised since 2009. That’s the longest period without an increase since the minimum wage was enacted, meaning today’s minimum wage is actually worth far less than it was in 2009.

This is an insult to American workers, and bad for our economy. It’s far past time to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour. 

******

Btw, if you’d like my daily analyses, commentary, and drawings, please subscribe to my free newsletter: robertreich.substack.com

******

Today’s minimum wage is a starvation wage. A full-time minimum wage worker cannot afford a two-bedroom rental in any city, county, or state in the entire country. Meanwhile, billionaires like Jeff Bezos can afford a D.C. mansion with 25 bathrooms and 5 living rooms — just one of his many mansions.

Now, the current minimum wage isn’t so low because these workers are “worth” less than they were years ago; quite the opposite. If the minimum wage had kept pace with workers’ productivity increases since 1968, it would be over $22 an hour today.

Even so, conservatives are out to scare you about raising the wage. Let’s debunk each of their talking points.

Myth #1: If businesses have to raise wages, they’ll cut employees’ hours or cut jobs altogether.

Rubbish. Since at least the 1930s, critics have argued that setting any minimum standard of decency at the workplace will raise employer costs and kill jobs — child labor laws, the 40-hour workweek, and workplace safety laws. Look: Treating workers decently is worth the price. 

Besides, an abundance of research shows that increases in the minimum wage do not reduce the overall number of jobs. Researchers examined 138 state-level minimum wage increases and found that the number of low-wage jobs remained essentially unchanged in the five years after the minimum wage increase, but paid more (See: Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-Wage Jobs*)

That’s a job upgrade, not a job loss, and multiple studies have come to the same conclusion.

When I led the fight to raise the minimum wage in 1996, many conservatives predicted huge job losses. Well, I’m happy to report that after the increase, almost 10 million low-wage workers received a raise with no decline in overall employment. It’s simply a myth that raising the wage automatically means lost jobs.

Not to mention the benefits for workers themselves. Raising the wage to $15 an hour by 2025, as proposed in the Raise the Wage Act, would give 32 million workers a raise.†

Here’s the bottom line: If your business model depends on paying your workers starvation wages, you should not be in business. 

Myth #2: Small businesses won’t be able to afford the higher wage and will be put out of business.

Baloney. The fact is, a higher minimum wage can actually lower costs to small businesses.

How? For starters, a higher minimum wage attracts more potential workers into the labor force, thereby giving employers more choice of whom to hire. This leads to higher productivity and better service. Better service means more satisfied clients and customers. Higher paid workers are also more likely to stick around, saving businesses the hefty costs that come with recruiting, hiring, and training new workers.

A study of the San Francisco airport confirms this: researchers found that following a wage increase, a majority of workers who received a raise improved their overall performance. The higher wages even led to shorter airport lines. Researchers also found that employee turnover declined by 34 percent – saving employers an estimated $6.6 million a year.

Smart business owners understand this. Henry Ford, after introducing the “five dollar day” in 1914 when the typical industry wage was less than half that, called it his best cost-cutting strategy because of the productivity boost that followed.

Myth #3: If the wage is raised, prices for everything will skyrocket and lead to widespread inflation.

Wrong again. Researchers have found that for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, prices increase by less than half a percent. And it’s a temporary price increase — occurring only in the month the wage hike goes into effect. No way this sparks inflation. 

In fact, the minimum wage needs to be raised so that it can catch up with inflation. Because of inflation, the minimum wage is now worth almost a third less than it was in 1968. And since it was last raised in 2009, it’s lost 17 percent of its value. This means that compared to 2009, minimum wage workers have lost $3,950 every year, leaving them with less money in their pockets to spend and keep the economy going.

That’s why a higher minimum wage would boost economic growth. 70 percent of the economy depends on consumer spending, so more money in people’s pockets means they can spend more on the goods and services that keep the economy going.

Oh, and raising the minimum wage would reduce the amount of money taxpayers spend on public assistance that families need because their breadwinners don’t make enough to live on. It’s estimated that nearly half of federal minimum wage workers’ families are enrolled in at least one safety net program, costing the public $107 billion every year. That’s right: our tax dollars are subsidizing corporations that don’t pay a living wage.

Myth #4: Most minimum wage workers are teenagers making some extra money on the side; they don’t need a wage increase.

More rubbish. While this might have been the case in 1968, it certainly isn’t now. Today, only 1 in 10 workers who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage is a teenager. More than half are between the ages of 25 and 54. More than half of them work full time, and over a quarter have children. Nearly 8 million are mothers. 

Today’s starvation wage hurts people who are in their prime earning years, preventing them from building wealth and establishing financial security.

Raising the minimum wage would also help reduce racial and gender pay disparities. Minimum wage increases and expansions in the late 1960s reduced the income gap between Black and white workers. Raising the wage would have a similar effect today, because Black workers, Hispanic workers, and women comprise a large portion of today’s low-wage workers.

In sum, raising the minimum wage is good for workers, good for businesses, and good for the economy. In addition to all this, raising the minimum wage is the morally correct thing to do. It ought to lift working people out of poverty, not keep them in it.

We’re the richest country in the world, home to the richest people on the planet. We can, and we must, treat our workers with the dignity and respect they deserve. That starts with paying them a living wage.

How Joe Biden Can Help Workers Without CongressDid you know Joe...

How Joe Biden Can Help Workers Without Congress

Did you know Joe Biden can help American workers right now, even without Congress? He can sign three executive orders, affecting a fifth of the economy and transforming millions of workers’ lives. 

Biden has made campaign promises to support workers. Here are 3 ways he can fulfill that promise.

First: require that the federal government contract only with unionized companies whenever possible. This would give workers more bargaining power in every industry from healthcare to telecoms to food service to tech to defense.

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Btw, if you’d like my daily analyses, commentary, and drawings, please subscribe to my free newsletter: robertreich.substack.com

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Back in the last century when I was secretary of labor, the Chamber of Commerce sued me for trying to do something similar. The Clinton administration had issued an executive order barring federal contracts with companies that permanently replaced striking workers. A federal court struck it down, ruling that the administration hadn’t shown that the executive order was necessary to save the government money. 

The way to ensure this executive order holds up is to include evidence that unionized companies save the government money. And that’s not hard to do. 

Unions may deliver higher wages but they also have been shown to deliver higher productivity. And higher productivity saves the government money.

Secondly, discourage union busting. Biden can require that federal contracts go only to companies that pledge to remain neutral in efforts to unionize. 

Companies routinely use an arsenal of union-busting tactics. Some are blatantly illegal. A third of companies fire employees who try to form a union. They harass and intimidate their workers. About half threaten to close up shop or slash wages and benefits. 

Why should taxpayers subsidize companies that illegally quash unions? 

Third, deny federal contracts to companies that break labor laws. Biden can require bidders on federal contracts to disclose any labor violations in the past 3 years. This would just be reinstating Obama’s executive order, which Trump revoked. 

Companies that break the law and hurt workers shouldn’t be rewarded with lucrative federal contracts.

A policy like this helps workers everywhere. One study found that when the Labor Department announced penalties for violating safety standards, other companies in the industry improved their safety standards.

Taken together, these three executive orders will improve the lives of millions of Americans. 

Make it happen, Joe. 

How Corporations are Using Inflation to Take Your...

How Corporations are Using Inflation to Take Your Money

Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise their prices, hurting workers and consumers while they enjoy record profits. 

Prices are surging – but let’s be clear: corporations are not raising prices simply because of the increasing costs of supplies and labor. They could easily absorb these higher costs, but instead they are passing them on to consumers and even raising prices higher than those cost increases.

Corporations are getting away with this because they face little or no competition. If markets were competitive, companies would keep their prices down to prevent competitors from grabbing away customers. But in a market with only a few competitors able to coordinate prices, consumers have no real choice. 

As a result, corporations are raking in their highest profits in 70 years.

Are they using these record profits to raise their workers’ real wages? No. They’re handing out meager wage increases to attract or keep workers with one hand, but effectively eliminating those wage increases by raising prices with the other.

Wages grew 5.6 percent over the past year — but prices rose 8.5 percent. That means, adjusted for inflation, workers actually got a 2.9 percent pay cut.

So what are corporations doing with their record profits? Using them to boost share prices by buying back a record amount of their own shares of stock. Goldman Sachs expects buybacks to reach $1 trillion this year – an all-time high.

This amounts to a direct upward transfer of wealth from average working people’s wallets into CEOs’ and shareholders’ pockets. 

Billionaires have become at least $1.7 trillion richer during the pandemic, while CEO pay (based largely on stock values) is now at a record 350 times the typical worker’s pay.

The Federal Reserve intends to curb inflation by continuing to raise interest rates. That would be a grave mistake, because it doesn’t address corporate concentration and it will slow job and wage growth. The labor market isn’t “unhealthily tight,” as Fed Chair Jerome Powell claims. Corporations are unhealthily fat.

So what’s the real solution?

First, tougher antitrust enforcement to address the growing concentration of the economy into the hands of a few giant corporations. Since the 1980s, over two-thirds of American industries have become more concentrated, enabling corporations to coordinate price increases.

Next, a temporary windfall profits tax that takes corporation’s record profits and redistributes them as direct payments to everyday Americans struggling to cover soaring prices.

Third, a ban on corporate stock buybacks. Buybacks were illegal before Ronald Reagan’s SEC legalized them in 1982 – and they should be made illegal again.

Fourth, higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. Corporate tax rates are at near-record lows, even as corporate profits are at a near-record highs.  And much of billionaires’ pandemic gains have escaped taxes altogether.

Lastly, stronger unions. As corporate power has grown, union membership has declined, and economic inequality has risen – the reason most workers haven’t seen a real raise in 40 years. All workers deserve the right to collectively bargain for higher wages and better benefits.

In short, the real problem is not inflation.The real problem is the increase in corporate power and the decline in worker power over the past 40 years. Unless we address this growing imbalance, corporations will continue siphoning off the economy’s gains into their CEOs’ and shareholders’ pockets — while everyday Americans get shafted.

The Democrat’s Secret Sauce to Win the Midterm elections

The beginning of May before midterm elections signals the official start of primary season and the...

The Real Reason Congress Gets Nothing DoneWhy doesn’t Congress...

The Real Reason Congress Gets Nothing Done

Why doesn’t Congress get anything done? Well, one chamber actually does. Hundreds of bills have been passed by the House of Representatives, but have been blocked from even getting a vote in the Senate. Bills like –

The Freedom to Vote Act,

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,

The Equality Act,

Background checks for gun sales,

Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act,

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

The Build Back Better Act.

The list goes on…

So why aren’t these crucial bills getting a vote in the Senate? Because the filibuster makes it impossible.

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All told, the House passed over 200 bills since the start of 2021 that have not been taken up in the Senate. Everything from investing in rural education to preventing discrimination against pregnant workers to protecting seniors from scams – bills that have real, tangible benefits for the public; bills that have widespread public support.

So don’t believe the media narrative that Congress is trapped in hopeless gridlock and

both sides

are to blame. One chamber of Congress, led by Democrats, is passing important legislation and delivering for the people. But Republicans in the Senate, and a handful of corporate Democrats, are hell-bent on grinding the gears of government to a halt.Why are Senate Republicans doing this? Because their midterm strategy depends on it. Republicans are blocking crucial legislation so they can point to Democrats’ supposed inability to get anything done, and claim they’ll be able to deliver if you give them majorities. Don’t fall for it.